What’s In A Name?

My weekly lectures (available at the Internet Archive) and column for this past פרשת במדבר discussed the legitimacy of the use of non-Jewish names by Jews:

In parashas Bemidbar (1:2), Hashem commands Moshe to count the Jews “with the number of their names”. The Sforno explains that this census (as opposed to the one at the end of chumash Bemidbar) included their names, since everyone from that generation had names that alluded to their personal nature, a distinction that the subsequent generation did not possess.

Elsewhere (Bereishis 29:35), the Sforno opines that the names that Yaakov Avinu’s wives chose for their children were not invented by them, but were preexisting names that they chose due to their linguistic applicability to their personal circumstances.

According to the Sforno, then, Biblical names were not necessarily natively Jewish. The Talmud itself contains a similar opinion about the name Esther. According to one view, Esther’s true name was Hadassah, while Esther was the name that the “nations of the world” called her, alluding to “Istahar” (Megilah 13a), meaning either the moon (Rashi), or the planet Venus (Yaavetz, Targum Sheni Megilah 2:7).

This etymology of the name Esther as being of non-Jewish origin has an important ramification for the law of gittin (bills of divorce). A fundamental dichotomy in these laws exists between “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” names, with different rules applying to how they are written in a get, and the question arises as to how to categorize a name like “Alexander”: on the one hand, it is certainly of Greek, and not Jewish, origin, but on the other hand, it was already a common Jewish name in the Talmudic era. One of the classic works on the laws governing the writing of names in gittin, the Get Mesudar (Mavo Shearim, Pesher Davar #2), rules in favor of the view that “Alexander” is treated as a Jewish name, for “even the name Esther did not sprout from holy ground, for it is from the Persian language … but it is nevertheless considered a Hebrew name since it had become common among Jews back when they still spoke the Holy Tongue, and it is also written in the Holy Scriptures, and so too Alexander and similar [names]”.

[I am always struck by Rashdam’s use of the idiom “שעברו על ראשו המים הזדונים” to refer to baptism …]

And while we’re on the topic of the names of Yaakov’s children, I’ll take the opportunity to cite Hizkuni’s utterly charming interpretation2 of Leah’s declaration, upon the birth of her third child, that “הַפַּעַם יִלָּוֶה אִישִׁי אֵלַי כִּי יָלַדְתִּי לוֹ שְׁלֹשָׁה בָנִים”: a woman can manage two children with her two hands, but requires her husband’s help once her offspring number three!